Public Service Internet monthly newsletter (Aug 2025)

2 people sat in chairs looking at the camera across a table with a cup on it
Black Mirror 7×1 Common People (2025)

We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed seeing browsers extensions turned into scraper bots, bodies used to fingerprint you with wifi and Mozilla under more pressure.

To quote Buckminster Fuller “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

You are seeing aspects of this with Duck duck go hiding most AI generated images in searches, looking at Proton’s Lumo privacy first AI and some children naturally reducing their phone to manage their mental health


Imagine if all phones were built this way?

Ian thinks: The fairphone has been around for years but version 6 of the smartphone, seems to have got everything right. This tear down by iFixit, shows exactly how easy it is to repair, replace and even upgrade parts in the future. One day all phones will be built this way?

Welcome to the age gated internet?

Ian thinks: Age verification has hit the UK and there is a lot to say. The VPN usage increase the UK in the UK speaks volumes. The UK isn’t the only one but the impact is being felt by everyone. If the recent Tea app and so many other data breaches has taught us, sharing personal data is not going to go well. I’m hardly hearing ZKP (Zero-knowledge proof) mentioned, which is good practice for this.

Degrowth is growing?

Ian thinks: There are many mentions of de-growth dotted across these notes over the last few years. This BBC News video gives a reasonable view of the movement, some of the challenges and best of all calling out some of the presumptions which plague the movement.

Cloudflare may have cut off 99% of AI crawlers?

Ian thinks: Its been well talked about and if you own a site, you may have noticed the huge amount of traffic caused by bots. Cloudflare have had enough and wrote a open solution called Anubis which is too expensive for AI bots to get around.

Not the last word on AI Slop

Ian thinks: You know its really bad when John Oliver spends most of his weekly show talking about the problem and how its affecting everyone. Leaning on the work of 404 media, Oliver uses comedy to great effect pointing out the insanity of were we are now.

Cory and Maria in conversation

Ian thinks: As part of the Open Rights Group’s celebration of 20 years since its inception on that day in London during the Open Tech conference. The conversation doesn’t sit in the space of nostalgia too long, but rather looks at what was learned and how it can be applied in current time.

The big questions around human brain interfaces

Ian thinks: There has been an uptick in Human brain interfaces news and discussion. However few are asking the really big questions we all have about the technology. Thankfully Coldfusion is asks theose questions about privacy, enshittification, agency etc. Dare I mention Black Mirror’s common people?

Decomputing AI for a better future?

Ian thinks: The critique of AI is well thought-out by McQuillan, and the relation to the context collapse, neo-liberalism and empire building is spot on. The ability of the AI empires to fill in the narrative when there isn’t one is also a key point. Well worth reading Empire of AI too for related impact, which I just finished.

Did you recently die or was that obituary fake?

Ian thinks: Is there no line AI slop won’t cross for the clicks? Fake obituaries are appearing across the internet and its another example of the slop and it is pretty bad news for its target/victims, the friends and family members. The video is also worth watching too.


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Why online dating sites don’t verify their users?

Getklex pointed me at a link about online dating in the east.

Online dating site OKCupid has found an inexplicable number of men happen to be exactly six feet tall and there are four times as many people who claim to earn $100,000 per year as there should be. False advertising, or misrepresentation, is standard in any marketplace; the dating market is no different.

While American dating sites have taken a laissez faire approach to lying, Asian dating sites have implemented serious measures to keep users honest.

China’s largest site, Jiayuan.com, ran into a huge PR problem in 2011 when a man swindled a woman he met on the site. This incident intensified Jiayuan’s more general reputational problems due to lying on its site. So Jiayuan developed a means for people to verify the claims they make on their profiles. Users can provide documents to the site, such as government-issued ID cards and paychecks, to back up their claims. Those willing to pay additional fees can have an in-person interview that gives a higher verification rating on the site.

Verification is one method of insuring who your about to contact is somewhat genuine. And its not just eastern dating sites which use it. There are a few paid dating sites which do verification and one or two other types of sites including AirBnB. Actually in AirBnB its a big advantage to have many pointers to your true and social identity including a verified ID.

Verification online dating sounds good, so why hasn’t happened?

Simple answer…. Greed!

The third explanation, which I think is probably most important, is driven by the economics of the online dating business. Dating sites (and, for that matter, other online markets) are largely a fixed cost business. A company has to design the site, the user interface, and the matching algorithm. Though a site needs to add more servers as it grows, scaling is a relatively easy and low cost proposition if customers start arriving in large numbers. But verifying individual users’ height, income, education, and the like has to be done customer-by-customer. Verification kills the scalability of a dating site.

Its too costly and only the serious ones who can afford to do verification. This means your skinnychristianmodeldating.com derivative won’t have the resources to do this. But more importantly from there point of view why should they? Oh sorry did you think the site was on your side? Oh sweet how naive you are… As many say, you are the product. They couldn’t care and why should they? Even the Eastern sites have done it under PR pressure. Maybe the rising tide of complaints will do the same in the west?

It can be as simple as Paypal’s take one penny from a credit card?

I like the idea because even on my dating profile I have a link to my personal blogging (maybe one of the reasons why I don’t get as many visitors as I use?) This for me proves I am real, the pictures are real and you can get a better sense this person your connecting with is real. In the face of catfishing and scammers, this has to be a good thing right?